Confusion
by zebralily999
Summary: Leonardo knew that his life would never be the same. Now he knew that Karai was in fact Splinter's daughter and there was not a stranger thought. And suddenly everything else in his life seemed just as messed up from just learning about Karai. What you do know can hurt you. The story is actually much better than the summary. Based in TMNT 2k12 directly after "Follow the Leader".


"Karai...is my daughter."

For a second, it was as if the world had frozen to Leonardo, unmoving. He couldn't feel the beat of his heart, hear the sounds of his brothers arguing the Lair, feel anything. Everything had stopped when he'd heard those four simple words

Leonardo's blue eyes widened, he stumbled backwards and barely managed to keep his balance. For a moment, he was very confused, his mind just wasn't accepting this. It wasn't normal. Splinter had to be lying...but wait, Splinter never lied. Even in this puzzled state of mind did Leonardo know this. There had to be some other reason, some excuse-maybe he'd misheard Splinter. Yeah, that had to be it.

"What did you say, Master Splinter?" Leonardo asked, fiddling with his hands nervously. It couldn't be true, it just couldn't. His mind was rebelling the idea, forcing him to look for other options. Karai, that malevolent little traitor, couldn't be his sister. She was Shredder's daughter, that fit. She'd tried to kill him several times already. That last fight Leonardo had barely escaped.

Splinter closed his eyes and took a deep. "It's true, my son," he said, shaking his head. His pained expression and even the way he moved-slow and deliberate, thoughtful-conveyed the sense of suppressed sadness. An issue that had always resided so deep in his mind, something he'd been trying to forget for years, had come rising to the surface, blocking out everything in life he cared about. His daughter was alive, and was back to haunt him, ruin his good memory of the smiling child who'd just barely said her first word-"Dada"-the day Splinter lost her. Painful memories in living form-Splinter's last memory of Karai-Miwa-ruined. This girl was not the Miwa he wanted to know, yet there was nothing he could do about it. It was good she was alive, but bad in every other way. "Karai is Miwa."

"No..." Leonardo said, barely above a whisper. He really did lose his balance and fall down this time, but stood up quickly. His eyes were glued to Splinter, but he wanted to run away, deep into the sewers. He wanted to scream and shout, and punch things, but he stayed still. Everything was so twisted up inside-was it good that Miwa was alive and well, or bad that she was evil and hated her father? He'd always imagined Miwa as an innocent child in human Splinter's arms, frozen forever in that black-and-white photograph-not the teenager who'd tried to kill him a couple hours ago. It was wrong in so many ways. Leonardo's gut twisted horribly at just the thought of her as his adoptive sister.

The two were silent for a moment, thinking to themselves. Splinter was suddenly more appreciative than ever that he had his sons-Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael. They might not have ever replaced Miwa, but they had given him something to love again, even when he felt like his heart was empty. Never before was there a time when Splinter was so happy to be able to call Leonardo "son". Miwa, sadly, was "enemy".

Leonardo tore his eyes away from his father. He'd never felt more confused. Was Miwa being alive a good thing? Paranoid thoughts flitted through his head, each worse than the last. Miwa was Splinter's true child, so maybe if someday Miwa was good, Splinter would abandon the Turtles and be with Miwa-Karai-whoever she was. No, that couldn't happen, it wouldn't. It was odd to him that he could face the most disgusting monsters without even the slightest sign of fear but couldn't accept the fact that Splinter was Karai's father.

Leonardo shuffled over to the old family photograph, in sort of a trance, not entirely aware of what he was doing. He saw his reflection, looking sad and worried, in the dusty glass, his face superimposed over this normal family. Tanshen, Hamato Yoshi, that girl. The girl he'd always, _always_ been taught was Miwa.

"This is Miwa," Leonardo remembered his father telling him and his brothers nearly eleven years ago. The memory was still vivid in his mind. Leonardo had asked, in his little toddler lisp, who the people in his dad's picture were one day. Splinter had decided to tell them, and for the first time since Miwa and Tanshen had died, he was telling their story. It hurt him but it had to be done.

"I am sorry, my son," Splinter said, looking at the floor. Leonardo turned around and eyed his father. He'd never seen Splinter like this-so...vulnerable. Maybe, he thought, his father wasn't just the rat with the amazing ninjitsu skills that always could always defeat any bad guy that came too close to his sons, but someone who had feeling and worries. Someone with flaws. It was a somewhat new concept to Leonardo, he was so used to seeing Splinter as invincible, an idol to want to be like.

The worst thought finally came to Leonardo last. He'd had a crush on Karai, and he still sort of did. It had stood even the test of her trying to kill him, even though it had faded greatly. Until the second he'd discovered Karai was technically his adoptive sister, he'd still had hopes Karai would someday like him too, sort of like Donatello with April but more complicated. It was wrong for him to have liked Karai in that way, he knew now, but no matter how hard he tried to extinguish it, there was still that small fire of hope inside him: she'll like me someday. It was wrong, Leonardo was disgusted at himself. He wanted more than ever to shout and yell and let all his anger, all of his confusion, out. He'd never been like this before, so angry with nothing to do about it, and wanted so much to be free of the feeling. "Father, please tell me this is a joke." It was a desperate plea for help with no chance of being true. Just someway to escape reality.

"My son, I would not joke about this," Splinter said solemnly, shaking his head. Leonardo's rapid breathing slowed, he felt as if his heart almost stopped, as he looked into his father's brown eyes. Somehow his father knew what was going through his head, the confused thoughts. Leonardo looked away quickly, he didn't want his father to know what was going on in messed-up mind.

Splinter didn't say anything about what Leonardo was thinking-his son would like it best if he was left to handle that problem on his own. Instead, he took a different route in the conversation. "There is only one thing I can say that can help the situation," Splinter said slowly.

"Yeah, and what's that?" Leonardo snapped. His blue eyes quickly widened and he backed away. He'd never retorted to his father. It was his anger, his confusion, that was making him act this way. It was Raphael's job to be angry like this, and Leonardo wished his brother were here to help alleviate some of the pain.

"_Kibou wo motsu." _

It was in Japanese. Leonardo racked his brains, trying to remember the meaning of that one phrase from the thousands he knew-from all those hours Splinter had forced him and his brothers to learn Japanese language and writing. The word came slowly into his mind, formulating. "Have hope."

"Yes, my son. Have hope."

"Have hope for what?" Leonardo hissed. This phrase wasn't helping at all, if possible it was confusing him even more. "That someday Karai will accept you as her father, that we can all forget she's you daughter, what? _Hope for what?"_

"Whatever you wish to hope for, Leonardo," Splinter said. "As long as you hope. Without hope, people are not truly living. They succumb to whatever is put in their path, even the easiest obstacles. And I have taught you for many years to fight whatever obstacle is put in front of you-mental or physical-but sometimes all you can do is hope that the obstacle will go away. Sometimes there's nothing you can do about something, no matter how well-trained you are to handle things-it's one of the facts of being human." Splinter immediately regretted the last words he'd said. It hurt him as soon as they came out of his mouth-"one of the facts of being human"-and he was reminded yet again that he was not human. He was different.

Leonardo didn't react well to those words either, they hurt him too. He'd never known what it was like to be human, and had been jealous of normal people ever since he'd learned of their existence. "Well, I'm not human, am I?" he retorted, mindlessly throwing words at his father. It seemed as if his world was crumbling around him as he watched, becoming the complete opposite of what it had been just minutes ago. "I'm a turtle. I'm a freak." And with that, Leonardo turned and ran out of the room.

His brothers, sitting in the Lair watching television, were having a much more normal life right now than he was. Leonardo was just a green and blue blur to them, running out of the dojo. Three pairs of eyes followed him-one green, one blue, one burgundy-until he disappeared into the tunnels of the sewer.

"What was that about?" Michelangelo wondered aloud.

Donatello and Raphael shrugged it off and the red-masked turtle pointed excitedly at the television screen. "Oh, here's my favorite part!"

"I'm seriously worried for you, Raph," said Donatello, "this is the part where the monster kills all the people in the city..."

Leonardo heard his brothers vaguely as he ran down the tunnels, discussing the movie they were watching, until he was too far away. He kept running, swerving on the turns, not paying an ounce of attention to where he was going. He didn't care anymore if he got lost-in fact, he wanted that. All he wanted was to be as far away from his home as he could-where he would have to accept the truth. Karai was Splinter's daughter. He thought of his brothers, the same as they were three hours ago, when they had fought the Footbots and Karai. They didn't know and Leonardo wouldn't tell them.

Finally, Leonardo came to a stop. His breath was ragged and irregular but he still wanted to keep going. Keeping himself busy would take his mind off of things.

Leonardo looked around at his surroundings. He was in an abandoned sewer tunnel. It was grimy, dark, and full of junk that had found its way into the sewers. Leonardo looked down and saw an television set, the screen cracked and dusty.

Anger was still surging throughout Leonardo's whole body, pulsing through his blood. Anger clouded his thoughts. Suddenly, something that finally made sense popped into his head: it was all Shredder's fault. Shredder was the reason his sister was gone and was so evil. Leonardo had wondered if it was possible, but it turned out he could get angrier.

He swiftly pulled his katana out of its holder and thrust it into the old television set. Quickly pulling it out, he jabbed it in there again. Then started swinging repeatedly, hitting the television everywhere that wasn't broken, taking joy in finally venting all of his crumpled frustrations. Swing, swing, swing, he lost count of the minutes. Soon, the television crumbled into very small pieces, sliced up and even more broken than before. He smiled. Leonardo knew this wasn't him-bad thoughts were infecting his mind like poison. He wasn't heroic right now, impressively fending off the enemy, he was beating a television set to pieces-despicable and desperate. The ends of his mask weren't fluttering heroicly in the wind like Superman's cape like they usually did-instead, they lay limp on his shoulders. Blue like how he felt.

Shredder.

The very name of his arch nemesis brought up all that anger over again. Shredder had deprived him of the most normal life he'd ever have as a mutant turtle freak and turned his sister against him and his family. He threw his sword one last time into the television set before shouting for all the world to hear. "I AM GOING TO KILL YOU SOMEDAY, SHREDDER!" He calmed down and pulled his katana out of the broken machine and put it back, muttering, "Then you will finally have paid the consequences for everything you have ever done."


End file.
